Apple App Store Reaches One Million Approved Apps

One million applications have been approved for Apple's iOS App Store, according to Appsfire, which tweeted that Apple reached the seven-figure milestone on 19 November.

We're yet to hear an official word from Apple, but Appsfire tweeted: "Breaking: today will mark the day the App store has seen 1 million apps ever created since launch (iOS)"

Ouriel Ohayon, co-founder of Appsfire, said that of the million apps submitted to Apple since 2008, 493,289 are paid-for and there have been 158,848 games approved by Apple.

Although the App Store doesn't have a million apps available right now, the service has seen one million submitted over the past four years; Appsfire believes that of those, 736,247 are currently live and available to download.

Of those, 336,000 are paid-for and just over 120,000 are games, accounting for around 16 percent; it's worth noting that these numbers are for iOS apps only, and do not include those available on the Mac App Store.

Apple is not expected to make an announcement until it reaches one million active applications - which is still more than 250,000 apps away - but the million submissions figure still goes to show how hugely successful the App Store has been in less than half a decade.

In that time, the App Store has been accessed by the majority of Apple's 400 million iTunes account holders, and has supplied more than 35 billion app downloads.

Appsfire's figures does not account for applications that have been removed by the developers, or by Apple itself, neither does it include apps that have been rejected by the iPhone maker for not complying with the Store rules.

At the iPhone 5 announcement in September, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that 90 percent of App Store apps are downloaded every month and that the average iOS user now has more than 100 apps on their device.

Apple also announced recently that of the 700,000 live apps on the store, 275,000 have been created specifically for the iPad.

As for the competition, Android's Play Store now has more than 675,000 apps and has seen more than 25 billion downloads.